Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius, a Marvel film about … errr … a vampire played by Jared Leto, took the No. 1 spot at the U.S. box over its first weekend of release, selling $39 million domestically and $80 million worldwide.
Yay for Marvel, the lil’ underdog that could. Reviews are pretty awful, and word-of-mouth isn’t exactly strong.
Look for this one to make back its budget and probably a little more. Hopefully not enough to warrant a sequel.
If you’re considering watching this, I’d recommend seeing one of Espinosa’s Safe House instead. But here’s the thing about Espinosa: He makes bad movies. So maybe just skip this one all together?
Adventure/rom-com The Lost City took the No. 2 spot at the box office with $14.8 million. So far, The Lost City has made just under $62 million worldwide over its first 10 days of release.
Directed by the Nee brothers and starring Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock, and Daniel Radcliffe, the film has been getting mixed reviews, but word of mouth has been positive. Looks like a remake of Romancing the Stone to me. Nothing wrong with that. This is one I’ll watch eventually, late at night, when I can’t sleep.
The year’s first major hit, The Batman, took the No. 3 spot, selling another $10.8 million, bringing its 31-day worldwide sales total to $710 million. Not bad.
Action flick Uncharted continued to sell tickets, taking the No. 4 spot with another $3.6 million. It has earned $139 million domestically and $373 million worldwide in seven weeks. I don’t get the appeal of Tom Holland. Is he a great actor? Meh. Is he Bieber-level handsome? Nah. Is he funny? No, he’s not. Is he sexy? Not even a little bit. I just don’t get it.
Surprise hit Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie rounded out the top 5 with just under $2 million in sales. So far, this one has already sold $150 million worldwide. Wild.
We are very much in the middle of Dump Season. Just look at the box office for proof. That being said, there are some fun ones coming out this weekend, including Michael Bay’s Ambulance starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Bay gets a lot of criticism, and perhaps rightfully so, but he makes fun, technically brilliant films. Not saying I’ll go see this on the big screen, but I’ll definitely see it eventually.
The big news is that A24’s new masterpiece Everything Everywhere All at Once will finally get a wide release.
Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and starring the legendary Michelle Yeoh, this flick is hard to explain. I’m not even going to try. Watch the trailer, take a look at a couple of reviews, and get to the theater.
Also out everywhere will be Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which should bring the kiddos back out to the theater for a couple of weeks. Hopefully someone does a supercut of all the Jim Carrey scenes so I don’t have to suffer through it.
Lastly, there’s a limited re-release of David Lynch’s Inland Empire. Lynch decided to shoot this on a camera that looks about half as good as your current camera phone. I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, but it’s certainly overrated and ugly as hell to look at. I love Lynch, but don’t understand why this film needed a reissue.
Now that some time has passed I gotta say, I’m bummed CODA won Best Picture. I get that it’s a feel-good story, and people love feel-good stories, but it’s just not the kind of film that should win Best Picture. The filmmaking itself is so unthinkably basic, and even cheesy. The performances are basic (and cheesy), and I just don’t see it being a movie people care about long term.
Like Crash, The Artist, or Green Book, I think this is one that we’ll look back on as an unworthy Best Picture winner. Bummer.
What should have won? Probably Dune, I guess. I’d have also been OK with The Power of the Dog, Drive My Car, or Don’t Look Up. Any of those would have aged much better than CODA, which is pretty much a Hallmark film.
Anyhow, none of it really matters, as this year’s ceremony will be remembered for one thing: America finally falling in love with Chris Rock. Took y’all a while.